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    A History of Alabama's Deadliest Tornadoes: Disaster in Dixie
    A History of Alabama's Deadliest Tornadoes: Disaster in Dixie
    A History of Alabama's Deadliest Tornadoes: Disaster in Dixie
    Ebook173 pages2 hours

    A History of Alabama's Deadliest Tornadoes: Disaster in Dixie

    By Kelly Kazek

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    About this ebook

    Journey just west of America's infamous Tornado Alley to Alabama, home to some of the deadliest tornadoes of the past century. These twisters remain etched in the collective memory of the people, from the 1908 Dixie Tornado, regarded as one of the most brutal tornadoes in U.S. history, to the 1998 Birmingham Tornado, the most expensive twister in Alabama's history. Discover how the 1932 Deep South Tornadoes resulted in 268 fatalities and millions of dollars in damage, and read the terrifying account of the 1977 Smithfield Tornadoes, which rocked this Birmingham suburb with as many as six twisters in a one-hour span. Join local journalist Kelly Kazek as she shares the tales of these natural disasters and the hardy Alabamians who endured them.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateMay 31, 2010
    ISBN9781614231691
    A History of Alabama's Deadliest Tornadoes: Disaster in Dixie
    Author

    Kelly Kazek

    Kelly Kazek is an author, journalist, blogger and award-winning humor columnist. She has written two books of humorous essays and ten books on regional history. She lives in Huntsville, Alabama, and travels the South's back roads, seeking out quirky history for her blog at KellyKazek.com and It's a Southern Thing (SouthernThing.com).

    Read more from Kelly Kazek

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      Book preview

      A History of Alabama's Deadliest Tornadoes - Kelly Kazek

      it!

      INTRODUCTION

      Not long after dawn broke on the morning of November 16, 1989, I was drawn to the intersection of South Memorial Parkway and Airport Road in Huntsville, Alabama.

      I used my relatively new press pass to get past the armed National Guard soldier stationed at the head of Airport Road, although I was not there as a reporter that day. I was there to bear witness to one of the most catastrophic events to hit this middle-class area of Alabama's fourth largest city.

      The streets of south Huntsville were ones I had driven many times—on which, in fact, I had learned to drive. The sites along Airport Road were familiar ones. I'd shopped at the jewelry counter at Golbro and bought Cokes at Riley's Food Store.

      But on this day, it was difficult to get my bearings. The landmarks of my youth were gone. In their place were piles of lumber and twisted metal. In the days following the horrific F4 tornado of November 15, 1989, almost everyone interviewed would liken Airport Road to a war zone.

      It had become cliché for tornado damage sites, but it was accurate nonetheless. In the span of a few minutes, churches and schools were destroyed, an apartment complex was reduced to rubble and more than one hundred cars were tossed into heaps like toys; 21 people were dead and 263 more were injured.

      It would be many years before Huntsville would recover.

      I had been a newspaper reporter for about two years, and it was the first time I had witnessed the aftermath of such wrath. It would not be the last.

      Over the course of the next twenty-one years, I would bear witness to countless tragedies, both natural and man-made: a teen murdered by her father, children killed in car crashes, a woman drowned after falling from the Tennessee River Bridge.

      I would photograph the Gulf Shore after it was devastated by Hurricane Ivan and make three trips to the coasts of Alabama and Mississippi to record Katrina's impact. They are images I will not ever forget.

      Some people think that reporters become cold, insensitive to the impact of tragedy. The reality, though, is often different.

      On the outside, we journalists must remain coolly objective in order to get the facts of a story. But on the inside burns the desire to record the human stories—perhaps in the hopes that history won't repeat, or to remind readers that the impact of tragedy continues long after camera crews have left or maybe just so that future generations will have a chance to know a person who no longer walks among us.

      Sometimes after the details of a story are written and the story is filed, the tears come.

      I consider myself a recorder of history. Though writing about death and destruction wrought by Alabama's deadly tornadoes is a grisly task on some level, I do not see the stories on these pages as dark ones. I see them as tales of hope and of people reaching for the light after the storm.

      The people described in these stories are survivors, whether they came out whole or disabled, filled with fear or with hope or were left grieving loved ones, their homes or simply their perspectives. All were changed when fury descended from the Alabama skies. That is what makes their stories meaningful.

      An important note about these stories: Details vary of the tornadoes that have struck Alabama, even among official sources. When writing about the more historic storms in particular, I had to rely on newspaper accounts and reports, which, when catalogued within hours of a storm, may not have been accurate. The death tolls, numbers of injured and extent of damage I used were typically the numbers on which the majority of weather experts and government officials agreed.

      Any Fujita scale rankings used for historic storms were assigned by weather experts after 1971, when the scale was created by Theodore Fujita, and were designated based on newspaper accounts and weather reports of damage. Before 1950, no official records of tornadoes were kept by any agency. In the 1950s, tornadoes were studied and their impact recorded by the United States Weather Bureau. Tornadoes between 1950 and 1971 were given Fujita scale rankings based on those reports.

      The human stories recorded on the following pages from tornadoes before 1950 are based on newspaper accounts and historical and family records. People involved in tornadoes after 1950 were personally interviewed for this book. Their memories, like all of ours, may not be perfect, but what cannot be ignored is that all of them can recall the horror and fear caused by deadly tornadoes.

      It is the people who give these stories their greatest impact.

      I hope I have done them justice in the telling.

      Chapter 1

      ALABAMA,

      STATE OF CHAOS

      A History of Deadly Tornadoes

      On Valentine's Day 2010, Kathy Sharp of Huntsville, Alabama, found two candy hearts on a table in her home in which she makes the flower arrangements that she sells.

      One said, Marry Me, and the second said, Say Yes.

      The hearts were from her husband, Johnny, who was asking if Kathy would agree to renew the vows they had made twenty-two years before.

      Kathy said yes. On their twenty-fifth anniversary on April 29, 2013, the couple will hold a ceremony.

      The renewal not only symbolizes the couple's love for each other but is also recognition that the Sharps’ marriage has survived—though few thought that it could possibly withstand the tragedy of November 15, 1989, when a tornado left Kathy paralyzed and tore the newlyweds’ lives apart.

      With little warning, the storm struck at dusk on a fall day, demolishing a school, churches, an apartment building and businesses along busy Airport Road in south Huntsville, making cars into heaps of scrap metal and bending huge metal utility poles like plastic straws.

      When the winds finally stilled, 21 people were dead, and 463, including Kathy Sharp, were injured.

      She was paralyzed.

      A view of devastation on Airport Road from atop Carl T. Jones Drive after the November 15, 1989 tornado hit Huntsville. Courtesy of Bill Wilson/the Anniston Star.

      DIXIE ALLEY

      Alabamians are accustomed to praying. They pray for their babies to be healthy, for a good cotton harvest and for the Crimson Tide or Auburn Tigers to win. And dozens of times each spring and fall, when they are chased into hallways, closets and basements by the chilling sound of tornado sirens, they pray for God to stop the winds.

      Most times, when the winds finally still and people emerge unscathed, they find that their prayers have been answered: no one was hurt—this time.

      The time spent huddled together with emergency lights and weather radios—and maybe a box of MoonPies—was just another form of family bonding. Too often, though, those who are lucky emerge from hiding to find that their neighbors have lost their possessions, their homes and, sometimes, their lives.

      In Alabama, tornadoes have changed thousands of lives. Most people think of states like Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska when they think of tornadoes. But Alabamians, particularly in central and northern parts of the state, know that spring brings dogwoods and azaleas as well as the sound of tornado sirens. November brings a second tornado season.

      Schoolchildren are accustomed to marching into hallways and covering their heads, so they will know what to do if a tornado comes near their schools. At times, classes and after-school events are canceled so that children will be home with their parents, and hopefully safe, when a storm hits.

      Dozens of times each year, television shows will be interrupted by continual storm coverage, in which television meteorologists plot the courses of tornadoes or potential tornadoes in an effort to get warning to those in their paths.

      Natives know what it means when the weather becomes unseasonably warm and the sky glows with an unnatural greenish tint. They know that they need to turn on the news.

      To someone living outside a tornado-prone state, the frequent warnings may seem dramatic. But anyone who has lived in Alabama for any number of years knows that there is reason to fear an approaching tornado. They almost always bring destruction. Too often, they bring death.

      Alabama ranks thirteenth in the number of tornadoes that strike states each year, but it ranks third in the number of deaths caused by tornadoes.

      In addition, Alabama has experienced more F5 tornadoes, the most intense, than any state but Texas, Kansas and Iowa. Alabama has had five F5 tornadoes, as have Iowa and Kansas. Texas is the only state to experience six F5s. Ohio and Oklahoma have experienced four F5s each.

      Northern and central Alabama are particularly susceptible to strong tornadoes because that is where the warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico meets the dry, cold air from the north. When hot air rises, it can begin to circulate if the winds are coming from different directions. A cone or funnel then forms in the cloud; if the funnel reaches the ground, it becomes a tornado.

      The most common season for tornadoes in Alabama is spring, particularly in March and April, but Alabama has a secondary tornado season in November. The devastating F4 that struck Huntsville in 1989 was the strongest ever experienced in the state in November. For several years in the early 2000s, more tornadoes occurred in November than in spring.

      Tornado season in the Plains states comes later. But in Alabama, March and April are unpredictable change-of-season months, with extremes including rare blizzards in March and an April record high temperature of ninety-four.

      Despite the devastation caused in this state, Alabama is not within the commonly known Tornado Alley. The alley is not a meteorological designation but rather is a colloquialism used to refer to states in which tornadoes occur most frequently, typically between the Rocky Mountains and Appalachian Mountains.

      Clean-up crews have a daunting task in the aftermath of the tornado in Huntsville. Courtesy of Bill Wilson/the Anniston Star.

      More recently, the phrase Dixie Alley has been used to refer to the deadly paths tornadoes take through the Southeast. Dixie Alley refers to the lower Mississippi Valley regions of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana; the upper Tennessee Valley region of north-central to northern Alabama; and Georgia.

      While tornadoes are less frequent in these states than in the traditional Tornado Alley states, Alabama and Mississippi have experienced more tornado fatalities than have the Plains states, with the exception of Texas, which has a much

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